Four years have passed since your magnificent victory. Has the buzz from this victory gone during these four years?

– It’s some kind of double feeling. You won the gold medal and here it is in your hands, but after that comes the question “What’s next?” Where should I go next? No, of course, I’m insanely happy that I won my medal and, of course, it’s still the happiest moment in my life. I often rewatch this performance. I look and imagine that I’m the same Adelina, who is physically and mentally ready for further success.

For many, that your victory was a winter New Year’s fairytale. Have you felt the feeling of a fairytale for the next four years?

– For half a year I was in euphoria, in a state of extraordinary happiness. I did not understand was it, is it or it still will be. When I finally realized that this has been already done, I’m the first in history, then I was proud for yourself, for my parents who helped, for the coaches – 9 years Elena Georgievna (Buyanova) and I have been goint to this medal together. And six months later the fairy tale started to fade. I needed to come to my senses. So I told myself “Yes, you did it, but now you have the next test – go on, do not stop.” Especially in my 17 years, I was still a child, who just started his way. At first I was given a calm schedule, I went to various events, I had an opportunity to see how the high life looks like. I looked, I kind of liked it at first, but then I thought “No, it’s not for me.”

After Rio-2016, the Olympic champion in fencing Yana Egoryan told us that after the Olympics, she got a lot of SMS. Every second had marriage proposal. How many of such SMS did you get?

– They still write to me “Marry me”, Instagram is a popular network now. A typical comment from a stranger: “You are perfect, marry me!”. I try to treat everything with humor.

You said that you didn’t like high life. But you had a lot of tv projects, shows.

– I agreed to these projects, because I had a serious injury. My days were similar one to another: I woke up and went to the rink, even when I had a cast. The skating rink was close, I went there to train and not to lose shape. When I realized that the season just went down the drain and in order to perform in shows on the ice I need to prepare for at least another six months, I received an offer from “Dancing with the Stars”. That is not ice, something new for me, but at the same time active, so it was possible to train an ankle after injury. But it was necessary to perform in pair, that was also unusual for me.

How did it work?

– The time flew fastly. I like to dance, I’m active, energetic. I wanted to continue and continue. I finished the project, my leg more or less recovered. At the same time I had ice training. It was not easy. I have a good muscle memory. I could learn the moves in a second. For three hours of training, I have already learned everything. And then everything went easier.

You also started a business at that time. How it goes?

– Yes. We have “Studio of Adelina Sotnikova” it provides a nails service, now there will also be a hairdresser and cosmetology. It’s my mom who keeps it. I gave her this project completely. I am only the face of our business. Mom gets pleasure, she has everything she could not have before. So I try to make the dreams of my family come try. I’m happy that I can do this. We started this business two years ago. At first it was not clear, although there was a name that you could promote. But it was not easy to do this. If we compare the actress and the athlete, then the actress is more popular than the athlete. I’m sometimes asked: what do you do? How many years do you do this? That is, many people have not heard who won at the Olympics.

You watched the Olympics-2018 from aside. How did you survive the absence of the Russian flag?

– We have athletes who are very strong in spirit. It would be very difficult to go through it. Someone says you should go, someone that you shouldn’t and someone says that those who will go they’re traitors! Loud words … I thought: what would I do in such a situation. And answered myself: “I would have gone to the Olympics”. You work 14 years to say “Oh, the end”? It would be both stupidity and fear. This would be a betrayal of myself, and of all who stood behind me – parents, coach, fans.

The whole country was torn between Zagitova and Medvedeva. Whom did you support?

– I was cheering for Russia. I can not to single out either Zhenya or Alina. They are both genious in their own way. Alina only appeared, doing all those difficult elements in her 15 years. She showed the world that she’s strongest on technique. Zhenya is a great artist! And she also was did the most difficult elements, albeit a little weaker. Alina won, because she made her program more difficult. Zhenya was beautiful, emotionall, but Alina won gold fairly.

When you see what a crazy combinations little girls do, what do you think about? Where does figure skating go?

– I do not know where. Apparently, somewhere to the sky. Now, when they discuss that the age for senior competitions should be 17, I think that this is the right decision. But it is now. Ask me the same when I was 15, I would be strongly against. At the age of 13 I was pulling my hair out from the impossibility to perform at the European Championships. But now I’m an adult, my head thinks differently. Now I understand that I won the Olympics at the age of 17 and many of my injuries are from accumulated fatigue, daily training. Now in our 20th we considered old women. What should we do? Train every day and then go to the Russian championship, where are such a child prodigies that it’s very, very difficult to get into the top three? And the thought comes: why do I need it all?

Really, why?

– I want to skate, to fight, to feel the drive that I felt then. But in a new appearance. With other emotions, fighting with myself. When Carolina Kostner skated at the last European Championship, I watched and did not want it to end! Only in her 31 she felt the drive and everyone who saw it enjoyed it. But on the other hand, in Italy there are no such children like in Russia, she does not need to give way to the others.

5 Responses to “Adelina Sotnikova: I want to skate, to fight, to feel the drive that I felt than”

She means that she wants to do it, not that she will. She clearly stated that as an adult, she now understands how much toll on her body doing 3Lz3Lo and all manner of combinations, overtraining, etc. took. When she was that young, she didn’t understand.

She said she wants to skate like Kostner. She probably admires Kostner’s maturity and poise on the ice. This is something you develop over a decade when you skate for a country that is very weak in ladies figure skating. In Russia, the girls have to rush to get the elements because there is no way you can be competitive without them. You can be the most artistic skater on the planet and still lose to a bunch of 13 year olds. It’s a compromise Russian skaters have to take, due to how competitive the scene is, there. Japanese skaters are seeing similar things happen, though to a lesser degree.

As artistic as she is, Kostner could never beat the Junior Russian girls, unless the judges lowball their PCS and gift her all the points. Artistry can only take you so far when the technical side is open ended and there are still loads of areas where the ladies can rack up more points (Triple Axels, Quads, etc.). We saw the beginning of this last season.

At no point in this interview did Adelina imply that she wanted to return to competitive skating. From what I see, she doesnt’ even see a point in training and competing just to go to Russian Nationals and get blown out by a bunch of jumping beans. I mean, she was already quite fortunate in 2014 to go to the Olympics, because Pogorilaya and Tuktamysheva were both perfectly capable of putting it together and making a case for themselves (and Anna backed that up with her performance at Worlds, where she was clearly robbed of a medal).